Addendum

At the end of my last post, Olympic-Sized Inequity, I commented on the outlier on the graph of gender inequity in sport, Grand Slam tennis tournaments. I would like to make the connection between that statement and MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow, where I heard about the outrageous circumstances about Women's Olympic ski jumping.

When Maddow hosted a news show on the now defunct Air America Radio network, she mentioned about three years ago how Wimbledon (The Championships officially) finally joined modern times and paid the Women's Singles champion the same amount of money as the Men's Singles champion. This put Wimbledon on par with the French Open, U.S. Open, and Australian Open.

At first blush I thought, "Cool," when I listened to her reporting on this story on my iPod. Then I thought about it. In these four tournaments (the winners in any case), women tennis players play less for the same amount of money. Women play at most three sets while the men play can play up to five sets. Based on that, women tennis players in Grand Slam events are paid more for their work than their male counterparts.

Does this make up for the gross disparity between men and women in athletics? I'd be a fool to say it does. However, I can appreciate small doses of poetic justice. Those doses make me hunger for more.